To produce faithful photographic reproductions of multicolored scenes, the color balance of the photographic film must be compatible with the spectral characteristics of the scene illuminant. Many photographic color emulsions are color balanced for use with natural daylight and others are color balanced for use with incandescent illumination. To properly expose a color film with an illuminant for which the film is not color balanced it is necessary to use color compensating filters. Alternatively, correction can be made during the printing stage. When such compensation is automatically provided by the camera, by engaging the proper filter or by marking the film with a printing instruction, it is necessary to have some automatic technique for discriminating among various types of light sources.
A patent of interest for its teaching of a method and apparatus for discriminating illuminant light is U.S. Pat. No. 4,220,412, entitled "Illuminant Discrimination Apparatus and Method" by R. A. Shroyer, et al. The method and apparatus disclosed in that patent utilizes the temporal signatures of the various light components based upon the peak amplitude and the harmonic distortion in the sine wave signal that is derived from the illuminant source impinging on a photodiode. The photodiode produces an electrical signal having an amplitude which varies with the instantaneous intensity of the illuminant. The apparatus includes flicker ratio detecting circuitry which is capable of discriminating between pure fluorescent light, pure incandescent light and pure daylight. The flicker ratio is the ratio of the brightest to the dimmest intensities of the light during a given time interval. Natural light, like other light emanating from a source of constant brightness, has a flicker ratio of unity. Artificial light sources, being energized by ordinary household line voltage, have a brightness which flickers at approximately 120 Hz, twice the frequency of the line voltage. Owing to the different rates at which the energy-responsive elements of incandescent and fluorescent lamps respond to applied energy, such illuminance can be readily distinguished by their respective flicker ratio. A circuit also detects the amount of harmonic distortion in the signal. Using the harmonic content, it is further possible to distinguish incandescent light from fluorescent light mixed with daylight and to detect which light source is predominant in a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent light.
With the general interest in digital systems, it is useful to incorporate illuminant discrimination into a digital environment. This is done in U.S. Pat. No. 4,827,119, which discriminates among various types of illuminants such as fluorescent light, tungsten light and natural daylight. The apparatus is comprised of an analog portion and a digital portion. The analog portion functions to convert incident light into a conditioned analog signal. The digital portion utilizes an analog-to-digital converter and a microprocessor to perform a Fourier series analysis on one or more of the harmonics of the illuminant signal. The microprocessor compares the amplitudes of the harmonics against the amplitudes of known illuminant sources to identify the source.
In certain situations it is desirable to separate scenes having a dominant illuminant from scenes having mixed illumination with no single dominant illuminant. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,198, mixed illuminant detection is added to the choice of illuminant categories to take care of the cases where one illuminant is not dominant. In such cases, color correction is best handled by printing algorithms. Boundary conditions are used, based on thresholding, to eliminate detection errors seen when fluorescent illumination mixes with certain quantities of daylight and otherwise causes a tungsten reading. The apparatus is comprised of a means for converting illuminate light into corresponding electrical signals. The electrical signals are then directed to a log amplifier wherein they are compressed to form a signal approximately equal to the log of the DC term plus a ratio of the dominant AC components to the DC components. A second portion of the apparatus receives the signals from the log amplifier and provides two filtered outputs which are multiples of the frequency of expected artificial illumination sources. Each of the output signals is compared against a plurality of threshold signals to identify which illuminant components are present. The combination of detected components are then compared against the components of known illumination sources with the closest match identifying the unknown source. Means are provided for combining the output signals from both of the filters to identify mixed sources.
The methods employed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,827,119 and 5,037,198 examine the frequency of flicker in the light intensity spectrum and determine from the frequency harmonics which type of illumination is being used. A problem has arisen because new fluorescent lighting systems use power inverters to increase the frequency of operation and the efficiency of the light sources. With such high efficiency fluorescent illumination, it is difficult to detect these higher frequencies, which are as high as 70 kHz, due to speed limitations in the circuit topologies typically used in amplification of the signal generated by the photodiode detector. Because the ripple amplitude is diminished at such frequencies, using boundary conditions such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,198 would detect such lighting as mixed lighting. The color of such light, however, is closely related to the color of fluorescent light, and it would be desirable to detect high efficiency lighting as such.